In Fate's Eye a King
by NateOdinsson
Summary: Diablo 2/Conan the Barbarian crossover. Slayer, we're not in Hyborea anymore! By some dark magic, Conan has been transported from his throneroom in Aquilonia to the world of Sanctuary, and it looks like the only way home will be to do what he does best.
1. Chapter 1

IN FATE'S EYE A KING

By Nate Davis

CHAPTER ONE: ARGUMENT and STRANGE MEETINGS

ARGUMENT

Hwaet! Wes thu hal! Well, here I am. My original-fiction work has been going slow, and I've read the auguries and decided that the thing to do is to go back to my roots: Pump out some fanfiction. For those of you who are familiar with Robert E. Howard's Conan stories, I guess you'd place this story sometime after the end of _The Scarlet Citadel_. For those of you who aren't . . . fear not. All will be revealed in time.

Some of you might remember the alcoholic Necromancer and the perpetually angry Amazon. Or you might not. If you do, feel free to recognize.

This'll be updated sporadically, since I spend most of my energy on original fiction and poetry. If you like what you see here, there's a link to where I post my original stuff on my profile. It's updated every Wednesday.

Skoal!

STRANGE MEETINGS

"_In vague dreams of conquest and kingdoms,  
__Do you wonder what they mean?  
__Distant voices forever calling: In fate's eye a king.  
__Tyrants and wizards, they fall before you  
__And what your Wyrd will be.  
__It was written in the furthest of stars:  
__In fate's eye a king."  
_—_Cauldron Born_

"_In Denmark the hard men are kings, and if a king's son is weak then a man from another family becomes king. The English think that kingship passes between the legs of a woman."  
_—_Earl Ragnar the Fearless_

DISCLAIMER: The character of Conan the Cimmerian was first used before 1930 and so is in the public domain in the United States. The Diablo franchise is owned by Blizzard Entertainment, and if they have a problem with me using it they can blow me.

Consciousness crept into Conan's body slowly. Feeling flooded his limbs and he felt himself lying on a slab of rough stone. He was a hard-bodied man unused to comfort and his bed in the king's chambers in Aquilonia was little more than a stone slab, but even it was more than this. Groggily he opened his eyes and found himself staring not into the darkness of his knighted bedchamber but rather up at a clear blue sky. "Crom!", he exclaimed in surprise and wonder.

He felt something poking him in the stomach and he rolled over to face it. Standing over him was a woman, a tall blonde big-chested woman, with iron muscles but a very graceful figure. She wore a leather corset and a short chain-maille kilt, carried a yew longbow slung over her shoulder and a heavy knife in her belt, and was lightly kicking Conan in the stomach. When he rolled over she dismissively said, "So you are alive," and walked off before he could address her.

Conan sat up and took in his surroundings, and one thing was clear: This was not Aquilonia. He was in a crude frontier fortress consisting of an outer palisade surrounding an inner wall of circled wagons. Rude tents were thrown up all over the place, and horses and oxen grazed between the outer and inner battlements. Instinctively he shot up and reached for the big bearded Francisca that hung above his bed, but he checked himself, remembering that this was not Aquilonia and he was not in his bedchamber. He stretched up to his full massive height and took a look around. He saw then that there were women stationed all around the edge of the palisade. They had the look of Bossonians with their brown hair, hazel eyes, lithe bodies, and heavy ashen bows. One of them, presumably an officer for she carried herself haughtily and had an honor guard of bow-armed women in her train, approached him.

"Welcome, Outlander," she said, "to our glorious hovel."

It took Conan a moment to understand her words. Her speech was familiar, yet strangely foreign; sort of like an obscure dialect of Aquilonian. He responded, "By Crom, where am I?"

The woman chuckled sarcastically and asked, "Where do you think you are?"

"It could be the Bossonian marches, but . . . no. No, I think this is a dream."

"This is no dream. You should speak with Akara."

"Who? Why?"

"To make sure you're not some sort of demon. You appeared on the way-stone a few hours ago and we've been watching you sleep ever since. Akara is waiting for you over there." She indicated the circled wagons.

Conan shrugged; there was naught else for him to do, and perhaps this Akara would have some answers for him.

The men inside of the wagon-circle all looked up when Conan the Cimmerian walked into view. He was of a Herculean build, tall and broad with great rippling muscles inherited from his father who was a blacksmith and honed by formative years in war and adventure, and the past few years on the throne hadn't softened him a bit; most of the men within were traders or farmers, not warriors, and they looked it. What's more the Cimmerian was dressed only in his bed-clothes, which were naught but a pair of short buckskin breeches.

An elderly woman dressed in purple robes and thumbing a string of silver beads approached him. She smiled and said, "I am Akara, high priestess of the Sisterhood of the Sightless Eye." She waited for the stranger to say something, and seemed disappointed when his face revealed that this meant nothing to him. She went on to weave for him a harrowing tale of a land ravaged by war, an attack by strange and savage beasts, and a warrior sisterhood driven from its ancestral home by an unspeakable evil. The Cimmerian stood and listened in spellbound silence. When the old woman had finished she said to him, "And what of yourself?"

"I am king in a land called Aquilonia. I went to sleep in my chambers last night, and awoke here this morning, unless this is all a dream. Stranger things have happened."

The old woman held up her silver beads and said, "Had you been a demon, you would've attacked me as soon as you saw these. Take this—" she tossed him a small pouch of gold coins—"and go see our blacksmith. Get a proper suit of clothes, and some equipment; any man who wants to stay here must do his part to defend the encampment."

Conan smiled at this; he enjoyed bloodshed, felt at home on a battlefield, and would relish the familiarity. He thanked the woman for her generosity and walked off toward the sound of steel beating against steel. The blacksmith was another woman, though stouter and stronger than the others. Her forearms and her warm face were covered in small burns from years spent bent over the forge. When the Cimmerian approached she stopped her work, smiled, and said, "Hi, there. I'm Charsi, the blacksmith here in camp."

"I am Conan, a Cimmerian."

"I've never heard of Cimmeria. Where is it?"

"It's . . . far away."

"Well you must've had a lot of adventures coming all this way. What do you need?"

"I need to buy clothes, and some weapons."

Charsi showed him her wares and he left her wearing a hauberk of chain maille over a leather shirt with a big Dane axe over his shoulder and a razor-sharp saexe at his belt. He felt ready for anything, and wondered when the fighting would start; perhaps then he'd get some answers. He looked about and saw one wagon with an open side at which men were seated, eating and drinking. What was left of his gold—not much, for a good suit of maille was a treasure—was burning a hole in his pocket, and his belly was rumbling, so he strode over and sat down at an empty stool. He bought a big earthenware vessel of warm beer and a steak of smoked and salted ox and got to filling his empty stomach.

Sitting next to him was a man with the look of a Pict: Very small, with dark hair and grey eyes. He had a bandaged hand and was nursing a bottle of whiskey. On the other side of the little man was the woman who'd awakened Conan.

"That's not good for your hand," she said to the little man, who merely grunted and took another drink. She looked up at Conan and said, "I see the old witch-woman judged you're not a demon."

The Cimmerian laughed, slapping his great thighs in amusement. "Of course I'm not a demon! Do I look like one to you?"

"You look like a man to me, but you did appear out of thin air onto a stone we were all nervous about to begin with. Stranger things have happened, I guess. So who are you? I'd say you were from the North, were it not for your hair and eyes." The Cimmerian had long black hair and crystal blue eyes.

"I am Conan, Cimmerian, and king of Aquilonia by my own hand. Yourself?"

"I am Alexa, an Amazon, and this ungrateful little turd is Dolos of the Rathmans. I came up from the south when I heard that there was war, because war always means treasure and most of the men in the northern marches have forgotten the use of the bow. Now I'm trapped, but the eastern road will be open before me soon enough."

"And what about him?"

Dolos grunted again and returned to his bottle. Alexa said, "He keeps pretty much to himself. I didn't even know he was here until I came upon him in the Den of Evil, unconscious and half-dead from a demon's bite. I saved his life and the little shit still hasn't thanked me."

The Necromancer chuckled derisively. Without a word he tossed a gold coin to the barmaid and walked off. She followed.

"Not a very pleasant sort, is he?"

"Not at all. Since I've known him he's barely spoken at all, except to tell someone to bugger off. But I can't really blame him; war does strange things to people. He's probably seen things I can't even imagine." She sighed. "So this place you say you're from, Cimmeria. What's it like?"

"Cold and dark. Very hilly, and covered all over in ancient forests, and its people are just as gloomy. I never felt quite at home there."

"And this other place, Aquilonia?"

"It's the richest of all the Hyborian kingdoms. Life there is much better than in Cimmeria, but an ease of living makes men soft and the Aquilonians are mostly weak and decadent, like all civilized peoples. I was a mercenary in her armies, and I fought in an insurrection against her king. I ripped the crown from the tyrant's head and became king by my own hand." He took a big quaff of beer, smiled at the memory, and asked, "So what of these Amazon lands? What are they like?"

Alexa started to speak, but was cut off when the captain who'd sent Conan to Akara came running into the circle of wagons. She looked out of breath, and genuinely scared.

"My Rogue scouts have just reported an abomination in the Monastery graveyard!"


	2. Grim Reunion

CHAPTER TWO: A GRIM REUNION

**Author's Note**: Contrary to what you may have heard, Nate is not dead! I went into seclusion for a while because, not too long after posting this first chapter of this story, I found out that my lady-friend of two years (who I was expecting to marry and to raise a brood of fucked up little mutant Anarchist children with) had been cheating on me; we are no longer together. As Odin the All-Father said, "Trust ye not the oath of a maid / Nor the word a woman speaks, / For their hearts on a whirling wheel were fashioned / And fickle their breasts were formed."

Also, I've come out as a bisexual. And Jones County Junior College is run by fucking Nazi pig bastards; I'll probably have to contact the ACLU to get the Blackshirts to release my fucking transcript because I'll be damned if they're seeing one red cent of that forty-five dollars. In other words, it seems the entire universe is conspiring to keep me way too busy to work on fanfiction. But at this moment I'm chilling here with _Inglorious Basterds_ on the tube, pizza in the oven, a can of green Monster in one hand and a peach-flavored White Owl in the other; all is right in Midgard!

_Finally the storm arrives  
Our way is at an end  
Under dark winter skies  
We make our final stand!  
For each of us there are four of them  
It matters not to us  
We won't leave this field in chains  
We are here to crush!  
Futile to resist  
You know why we have come  
Futile to resist  
The battle is already won_  
—_Amon Amarth_

"_Battle is an easy thing. What's hard is the look on your woman's face when you are a weakling! But I see no-one here who must worry about that. Today is a good day to die, today is a good day to meet the gods, so let us send our enemies screaming to meet their gods today!"_  
—_Rome: Total War_

Dolos was scared.

This was the first time that Dolos had really known fear since the day he fled from Tristram; it was said that to be afraid of dying meant that you had something to live for, and after being exiled from his ancestral homeland and then watching as all of his friends and what was left of his family were torn apart before his very eyes, pain and death didn't hold much terror for him. But something about the situation he was in now was . . . different. And for the first time in close to a year, Dolos was really and truly scared.

He was hiding behind a headstone in the Rogues' graveyard, nearly paralyzed with fear. Alexa and Conan were penned down near the gate by Blood Raven's army of undead; his axe and her bow were holding admirably, but for every ghoul they put down there were two more freshly risen to take its place. Blood Raven herself was walking back and forth through the rows of headstones, coming ever closer to the one which Dolos hid behind.

"Oh, my sweet little rabbit," she said in her fell voice, "won't you come out of your hole?"

Dolos wrestled with himself for control of his mind. Gaining a brief moment of clarity, he considered his options. He could keep hiding and wait to be discovered, and he would be shot. He could wait until her back was turned and make a dash for the bushes, but she would surely see the motion and he would be shot. Or he could jump out and attack her, hopefully taking her by surprise, in which case he would at least be shot in the front instead of the back. For the time being, he waited; between his lack of options and his paralyzing fear, there was little else he could do.

"I knew you looked familiar," Blood Raven went on as she checked behind another row of markers, her bow held ready with an arrow at half-draw. "The road has not been kind to you, but certainly I could never have forgotten that face. I still remember the tears you cried when they took my broken body out of the Labyrinth after Diablo's fall. For yes, I was awake then, as I was awake when my Sisters laid me in my tomb, as I was awake when I felt the Maiden of Anguish call to me and give me new strength. And don't think, o my little rabbit, that I didn't know what you thought of me. Oh yes, I and the whole village knew how greatly you were smitten with me. Well once I've slain you I will raise you up again, and you can rule alongside me as my king! Come on out, little rabbit, and get it over with. Dying is not _too_ terribly painful."

She was close to his hiding-place now, and Dolos knew that he had to do something soon. A desperate plan formed in his mind. He took a deep breath, fought down his fear as best he could, and sprang suddenly into the open, pointing his rapier at Blood Raven and shouting an invocation in some dark and long-forgotten tongue. A long, sharp spike of bone formed out of thin air and flew at Blood Raven's face, half a second before she let her arrow fly. She dodged out of the way of the projectile, but it threw her shot off enough to save Dolos's life. He cowered beneath the bushes with an arrow sticking clean through his breeches but barely missing the skin; had his spell been off even slightly, the arrow would've pierced his femoral artery.

Out of the frying pan, he thought, and into the fire. Escaped from goblins to be caught by wolves. Blood Raven wouldn't fire arrows randomly into the bush; she would run out of arrows just as easily as get a lucky shot, and that would give him just enough time to run out and stick her. Nor would she try to beat him out like a rabbit, and thus bring herself close enough for him to strike. For the time being, he was safe. But how long could he stay here, cowering in the bushes? How long did he have before one of the ghouls wandering the graveyard stumbled upon him, forcing him to give up his hiding-place?

Blood Raven drew back on her bow and drew a bead on the bush. Dolos traced the path of the arrow in his mind and prepared to duck out of the way when the head of the arrow burst into flames. He cursed under his breath.

A long-shafted goose-feathered arrow imbedded itself in Blood Raven's shoulder, sending the shot wild. As quick as thinking, Dolos sprang out of the bushes, closed the distance between them in three long strides, and thrust his rapier up and into her ribcage. She shuddered once and collapsed, as limp as a dead fish.

Alexa and Conan came bounding up to where Dolos stood. The Cimmerian's big Dane axe was notched and his exposed arms were covered in long deep cuts from which the claret flowed freely; Alexa was rubbing her stiff arms, trying to soothe the fire out of them.

"You're quick on your feet," the Cimmerian said with a nod. Dolos grunted and nodded back, accepting the complement.

Alexa stooped down and took the five remaining arrows from Blood Raven's quiver, wincing as she bent her right arm. "I haven't had to bend my bow so many times in one day since . . . ever. I think all this time spent cowering in the Rogues' encampment has softened me."

"If all of our foes are as tenacious as those beasts," said the Cimmerian, "you'll soon be hardened. I don't think I've ever seen a bow as heavy as yours, even amongst the Bossonian rangers."

"An Amazonian longbow will knock flies off of a deer's backside at a thousand yards and can punch through all but the thickest armor, but it's almost two hundred pounds on the draw. I should start doing more push-ups." She took a small glass bottle of red liquid from her pack and rubbed some of its contents on her sore arms. "Bossonian rangers?"

"The men of the Bossonian Marches—the northwestern borders of my kingdom—are the finest marksmen in all of Hyboria. Their bows have decided the outcome of many a desperate battle."

Dolos, who had been staring in morose silence at Blood Raven's corpse, coughed and said, "Let's go back to camp. I need a fucking drink."

The Cimmerian laughed. "A fine idea! I could use one myself."

* * *

" . . and then," said Conan, gesturing with his vessel of beer, "when I thought I was surely done for, she appeared! The Queen of the Black Coast made good on her promise. As surely as I am sitting here she stood between me and that beast. She was only there for a moment, but a moment was all I needed. I ran the beast through the chest with my sword and it moved no more."

"So she did come back," said Alexa, "back from the very pit of Hell to fight at your side when you needed her."

"Aye."

"You loved her, didn't you?'

The Cimmerian took a deep quaff of beer and said, "That I did. I have known the embrace of many women, but only two have I ever truly loved. She, the Queen of the Black Coast, and another, Valeria."

"Tell me of Valeria."

He shook his head, said, "Nay. I'll not speak of her, at least not here in the open air. What of you, Alexa? Any man would be lucky to win the heart of one so beautiful as you."

Alexa blushed at the complement and said, "Well, what is love? I've known the embrace of my share of men and I've suffered them their affection for me, but no, I don't believe I've ever met a man who was worthy of my love." At this last comment, Dolos let out a noticeable sigh. Alexa went on: "I'm still young, only a few years into womanhood by the reckoning of my people. Love means marriage, and marriage means children. I wasn't meant for a settled life. Let me have what adventures I can while I can before waste the best years of my life barefoot and pregnant."

She and Conan toasted her sentiment. The Cimmerian turned to Dolos and said, "What of you, my friend? Any conquests to speak of?"

The Necromancer looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. Fire lept into his eyes, a fire of pain and hatred, and he turned to the Cimmerian and said curtly, "That is none of your fucking concern, meathead."

Conan laughed and said, "Are all of your folk as gloomy as you?"

"I've only ever spoken with three Rathmans," Alexa said, "and yes, they're a fairly gloomy people. They spend a lot of time meditating on death, and their religion is profoundly hopeless. But the other two at least had manners."

Dolos took another long drink of wine, his face displaying only a mixture of nervousness and profound indifference.

A Rogue walked up to them and said, "Pardon me, but if you'll follow me, Kasha wishes to speak with the three of you."

She pointed them to where the Rogue captain stood near the entrance of the camp with one of her scouts standing next to her. She gave the three of them a look of begrudged admiration and said, "I can hardly believe that you've defeated Blood Raven! Outlanders, you have earned my trust . . . and the allegiance of the Rogues. We are in your debt." She motioned to the scout standing next to her. "This is Divo. I'm sending her to accompany you in your quests. She will serve you well."

Divo bowed and said, "I look foreward to fighting with you. I grow tired of sitting behind these walls and waiting."

"An extra pair of hands is always welcome," said Alexa, "and Rogues are second only to my own people in skill with a bow. Thank you very much, Lady Kasha."

"Thank you for taking care of Blood Raven before she could threaten our encampment. At this rate, it won't be long before we can retake our monastery. Go with the blessing of the Sightless Eye, heroes."

The four of them walked off and were soon approached by the old woman, Akara. She said, "I have another quest for you, if you are willing."

Alexa nodded. "We are willing."

"It is clear that we face the demon queen Andariel. This is an evil difficult to comprehend, let alone combat. There is only one sage wise enough in lore to aid us, and I am sure that the minions of Hell would have rashly murdered him. You must find the portal to Tristram—"

Dolos blanched.

"—and find and rescue Deckard Cain."


End file.
